Copyright Advisory Network

From November 12-14, 2008, the American Library Association’s Office of Information Technology Policy hosted a thoroughly stimulating conference on Cultural Heritage and Living Culture: Defining the U.S. Library Position on Access and Protection of Traditional Cultural Expression. Held in Washington D.C., the conference aimed to discuss and debate the present and historical role of archives, libraries, and museums in preserving and providing access to the “traditional cultural expressions” (TCE) of indigenous people and traditional communities worldwide. The conference further aimed to begin forming ALA positions on TCE, including how the rights of native people in their own TCE interact with conventional Western concepts and codifications of intellectual property. ALA will be able to carry forth these positions to discussions with global organizations such as UNESCO and the United Nation’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). WIPO’s Intergovermental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore (IGC), addresses protections for TCE, which affect and are affected by international copyright treaties and U.S. copyright law.

In order to begin to build the framework for an ALA policy on TCE, the conference participants discussed the history and current policies of museums, archives, and libraries toward the acquisition, display, and treatment of tangible and intangible expressions of traditional culture such as music, manifestations of religious belief evident in material culture and dance, and traditional forms of healing and medicine. Through case studies, examples of projects, and discussion, conference participants examined key issues for libraries, archives, and museums that collect and have collected traditional cultural materials. Also examined were how respect for the rights of traditional culture, and how the management and preservation of traditional culture by archives, libraries, and museums, will coexist with intellectual property rights as envisioned by organizations such as WIPO, which was started in 1967 to encourage a “balanced” international intellectual property system. Since the establishment of WIPO’s IGC in 2001, more attention is being paid to the concerns and rights of indigenous communities in their traditional cultural expression.

The conference consisted of panel discussions as well as a keynote presentation by Wend Wendland, a lawyer who is head of WIPO’s IGC. Michael Taft, archivist of the Library of Congress’ Folklife Center and a conference speaker, pointed out the tension between concepts of ownership between a group such as WIPO, created by copyright and patent lawyers, and the concepts of moral rights and community obligations of traditional communities. Who owns traditional cultural expression anyway? Taft pointed out that archives, libraries, and museums possess collections and permit access to them but these institutions are not the tradition bearers. He also raised issues that the conference speakers and attendees would struggle with during the conference in considering an ALA statement on TCE. For example, who “owns” culture practiced in diaspora? How do innovations in culture affect “ownership” rights? Taft also said that archives would probably continue a role already begun: to provide training and advice to indigenous people to control their own expressions. Perhaps archivists would relinquish or reduce their role as caretakers of others’ culture.

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klaudia52 Events ALA, copyright enforcement, International copyright, librarians' knowledge, Public domain, Technology, user generated content

On Tuesday July 29th, Jon Ippolito and John Bell of the University of Maine’s Pool project spoke at Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet and Society on Can Creativity be Crowdsourced? Jon Ippolito is assistant professor of New Media; John Bell is a devotee of open web culture and web designer at the university. POOL is an open source community and avenue for artistic collaboration, artistic exhibition, criticism, and a means of observing and tracing the artistic process. Artists, interpreted broadly, can post their work and have others reuse it, build on it, collaborate on it, or they may post their work and reserve all rights to it.

What was most interesting in the crowdsourcing creativity discussion was the issue of licensing, reuse, and tracing of the artistic process. The gentlemen from Maine did not simply support the concept of total freedom to use and remix other’s work, but instead emphasized their preferred mode of building relationships, of building community, acknowledging a debt to work that came before – the key point being community and relationships. Thus, their POOL Choosing Rights page offers access ranging from “all rights reserved” through Creative Commons licenses to public domain.

If you click on Orient Yourself on the Pool homepage, you will be offered a walkthrough of how POOL functions.

klaudia52 Copyright news, Copyright resources, Creative Commons and Open Licenses, Open Access, Public domain Creative Commons and Open Licenses, Open Access, Public domain, user generated content

On April 17th, the Berklee College of Music (in Boston, MA) hosted “Envisioning 21st-Century Music Business Models,” part of a series of discussions at Berklee on the future of the recording industry. A standing room-only audience of primarily young men listened to music business executives and Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights.

Understanding music licensing and the collection and payment of royalties is not terribly simply for those not part of this business. Ms. Peters spoke a bit on the history of copyright and sound recordings, noting that sound recordings were not covered by federal copyright law until 1972. She positively did not discuss the status of recordings issued before 1972. They will not be covered by federal copyright until 2067, unless the law is revised.

New ways of generating revenue for the music business (oh, and for artists also), was the subject of this Berklee discussion. Someone mentioned Rhapsody, the online subscription music service that provides streaming access to a library of digital music. Albhy Galuten of Sony BMG Music Entertainment then spoke of a proposed larger and interoperable system being considered by Sony and Universal Music Group called Total Music. (Here is a CNET blog post on this possible venture). The initial goal of the project would seem to be to establish a subscription music service that would of course be an iTunes competitor. But Mr. Gahluten spoke of the interoperability of systems as key to the enterprise, with the goal of generating revenue from the sheer convenience of providing users the delivery and management of music via cell phone, iPod, laptop, home server, etc. A service aggregator such as Verizon was mentioned as theoretically capable of providing this integrated service.

Aside from the technical feat of the cross-platform provision of one’s digital music on a variety of devices, what about the licensing of the music? Discussion participant Susan Butler, Billboard’s legal correspondent, asked if a compulsory license would be required to do this, and asked how likely this would be to happen. Possibly some other form of automatic licensing by a performing rights or collecting agency could serve. Marybeth Peters asked who would pay to make the Harry Fox Agency more efficient (sufficiently efficient, that is, to actually successfully manage licensing for a venture like Total Music).

For the outside observer, a “take-away” from the Berklee discussion was the IMPRESSION that portions of the music business are prepared to let people listen to as much music as they wish, at any time, on as many devices as they wish, in exchange for a reasonable, regular fee. In truth though, listeners will have to wait and see what sort of digital rights management would be employed by a business like Total Music and what choices listeners will have then.

[Hopefully, this post is not too far afield from copyright and librarians].

klaudia52 Digital Rights Management, Technology

Molly Kleinman recently reported on the Orphan Works hearing held on March 13, 2008 by the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. Molly wrote that “a reasonable orphan works bill would have a tremendous public benefit overall, and a particularly strong impact on libraries and their users”.

The problem of orphan works truly plagues archives as well as libraries. Archives deal primarily in unpublished work and a university archive, for example, may contain collections of university publications of indeterminate publication date or photographs acquired somehow but for which copyright information has been lost or was never clear in the first place. Particularly in a university archive with old materials, what does an archivist do about digitizing undated publications or ones that may have been self-published (when?) by faculty or by university departments or class members? For grey literature, it is thoroughly difficult to know whether the copyright timer still ticks or if it’s even begun to tick.

For an archive with massive amounts of materials for which copyright ownership once seemed reasonably clear – how much control (vigilance?) must the archive attempt to maintain over materials put online, let’s say photographs, or theses citations that users could possibly use in ways that make life difficult for the archive.

In truth, perhaps the greatest chilling effect of copyright and orphan works for an archive lies in its prospective collecting of materials. A collection might be available to an archive, but it could be declined if the archive does not see how it could provide access if copyright ownership is unclear. This is a sad outcome, because many archives, including mainstream ones, are waking up to demographic changes and alternative culture in the United States, and there are so many excellent collections that could be made available to the public now!

In anticipation of upcoming legislation, what are some possible remedies for the vagaries and unease of digitizing and having to take responsibility for the acquisition and use of materials for which knowledge of copyright ownership is not precise or does not exist? The possibility of a United States Copyright Office database or registry of works of content holders is not palatable to that office, according to testimony of Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights. However, Stanford University maintains and is building its Copyright Renewal Database which hopefully will grow and be a model for additional or allied databases. There is also image recognition/digital content monitoring technology that can help identify the rights holders of some images.

For archives, those that are not-for-profit and which serve education and culture, the creation of best practices for the use of orphan works may be of great use in guiding what can be done with such material. Guidelines can certainly help produce strength of numbers and make many more resources available to the public.

Tomorrow, April 4, Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig will speak at Harvard on the Building the Change Congress Movement. Perhaps he can be encouraged to say a few words on the subject of copyright.

klaudia52 Academic libraries, Copyright news, Fair use, Orphan Works

Catherine Candee, Executive Director of Publishing and Strategic Initiatives at the University of California’s Office of Scholarly Communication, recently spoke at Harvard on the topic of “Whose Knowledge Is It? UC Takes On IP.” Ms. Candee spoke of universities’ need to fulfill their mission to disseminate scholarship and create knowledge [in a timely manner]. In order to do this, the UC system must create economically sustainable alternatives to highly costly licensing agreements with outside publishers. Those agreements grant outside publishers the copyright to faculty scholarly articles and research.

After wobbly opening steps, the University of California has now regrouped to begin to establish a clear Open Access Policy through which the university’s faculty retain copyright to their work, work which will be deposited in a UC open access repository (unless faculty opt-out under straightforward guidelines). The university would then distribute the scholarly work worldwide and manage copyrights on behalf of faculty.

Ms. Candee also spoke of other innovations in scholarly communication. She spoke of an evidence-based approach in determining research and open access needs, emerging publishing needs and ways the UC Press (and by extension other university presses) together with the university can evaluate non-traditional means of disseminating information and generating knowledge. Ms. Candee also spoke of the recent vote of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences to proceed with establishing an Office of Scholarly Communication to widely disseminate the scholarly work of Harvard faculty, while retaining copyright for faculty. Ms. Candee concluded that if Harvard can do this, so assuredly can the University of California.

The presentation was given on March 17, 2008.

klaudia52 Academic libraries, Copyright news, Open Access Academic libraries, Copyright news, Open Access, Uncategorized